No you are not right. 32 bit OS can use theoretical 4 GB. Becurse when the processor use 32 buses (adress bus , Data bus, etc) it can only adressing 2^32 Bytes, and this is a maximum of 4 GB (2^32 is 4294967296 Byte and that are 4 GB for useing) but in realty is it 3,3 GB ( I dont know why it is so). And with 64 bit is is more (2^64 is 1844674407309551616 Byte and that are 16777216 TB or 16 ZB (Zetta Byte , 10^21))

Bye

White_Wolf

lol, Newbie and 568 posts?

Posts have nothing to do with you being a programming newbie.

Just the defines wasn't so clear! but now it is. And you don't know anything about my programming skills.

It's in fact true that you are limited to 4GB of RAM in a 32Bit OS. When talking about Windows you can say that you're gonna have 3GB Ram for free and 1GB which Windows uses for itself. That's just a rough guide though as you're going to get a bit more than those 3GB for various reasons. I don't know all of the influences which play a role for this but e.g. depending on you using a GPU which grabs some your memory or not the amount of memory you have for your applications differs. Something around 3.3 is a quite usual number though (I myself have 3.25GB)...

In order to use more memory you need a 64Bit OS. It's not very widespread in terms of Windows (quite different for Linux) because of the 64Bit XP version being crap and getting nearly no driver support by the vendors and Vista sadly still went for two versions of it where you have to choose between 32 and 64Bit plus in its former days using the 64Bit version really was no fun especially in terms of driver stability. I'd like to see Windows 7 finally being 64Bit only - dunno if Microsoft wants to do that...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

Apparently there are some confusions about what a 64 bit system is. You don't need to fear that your processor uses "only 32 bit of its address and data buses" under Win32. The difference is software only.

In 32 bit mode, the processor uses 36 bits for addressing RAM, meaning a 64 GB limit, but Win32 supports less than 4 GB. In 64 bit mode, the processor on a normal PC does not use any more address bits, but the OS can now use the full address range. Thus when you have 3 GB RAM or more, 64 bit programs will indeed run a little faster due to more effective memory management.

A separate 64 bit version of Gamestudio will become eventually available, but not so soon. The advantage is not big and 64 bit OS are still the minority.

@cro_games
Mind you your the only one insulting anyone. How exactly is a typo categorize someone as a newbie? Unless you never posted a typo in your life you can't really say anything. When I read his post I knew right away what he meant. Maybe since your problem solving skills aren't all in tact, you couldn't? If you have a short coming don't blame someone else for it.

Wow! Thanks PrenceOfDarkness! You're the man!
BTW, My signature is good for him .

Hallo,
maybee it helps you all a little bit to give you some examples re my experience on Windows Server 2003 32/64 Bit:

We have for all cases the same Hardware wich is 64 Bit compatible - Processor INTEL Dual Core, Mainboard 8 Gbyte, Raid etc.

1. Case: 32bit Server 2003
32 Bit Program can address ONLY! 2 Gbyte Ram

2. Case: 32bit Server 2003 with 3Gbyte Switch enabled in Boot.ini
32 Bit PRogram can adress around 3,2 - 3,3 Gbyte Ram

3. Case: 64bit Server 2003
32 Bit Program can address around 4 Gbyte Ram but runs in compatibily mode and is NOT faster then on 32bit OS.

4. Case 64bit Server 2003
64! Bit Program can address upto 128 Gbyte Ram (no Software but actual Hardware Limit) and Application is 20% to 40% faster (on my Database Application Tests - i have no experience if 3d Software etc. are faster)

Hope helps you a little bit out of Confusion.

the increased speed is mostly due to the usage of 8 additional 64 bit wide and 8 additional 128 bit (sse) cpu registers and because 64 bit integers can be computed with in the standard registers. of course all this depends on the compiler; mmx/sse registers (mmx/xmm... whatever) have ever been 64/128 bit wide and you still can't do floating point operations in the standard registers afaik.